


Real

by brontok



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brontok/pseuds/brontok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days Sergio misses him. Other days Sergio wishes he stays gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in LJ

Sergio misses him.

It shouldn’t have taken him this long to realize it, to accept this blinding fact for what it is, but everyone has been telling him he’s been doing much better lately. He’s eating healthy, sleeping well, going out, meeting people, balancing school and work. He’s breathing and functioning and living in the real world.

He began missing him last week.

It’s his mother’s fault, actually. She had been talking up this girl, the darling daughter of a friend from high school, and she said it would be great for the two of them to meet. He had given in and asked the girl out on a date because nothing says ‘I’m doing better’ than him expressing romantic interest on another person.

The date turned out pretty well. The girl was nice, the food was great, the conversation was entertaining. He had walked her to her apartment and kissed her goodnight, then he got home and promptly vomited on the living room floor.

He misses him.

It’s mere coincidence, though, that he had stopped taking his pills. He had run out and was simply too busy to get a refill on the prescription, but he’s been doing fine, he’s feeling fine, and he has been fine for years. He misses him but it’s been a long time since he last saw him, and a little vomiting doesn’t mean anything at all.

It takes a day or two of this — this strange feeling of slowly waking up, of resurfacing for the first time after his head’s been underwater for so long — before he does wake up one morning and he is there.

_Good morning, sleepyhead._

He bolts up from the bed and stares. Fernando is casually leaning against the doorframe, eating cereal from a bowl, barefoot and wearing pajamas, hair ruffled from sleep. His shy smile peeks out from behind the spoon in his mouth.

Sergio tries to speak but coherent words do not come. Instead, he squeezes his eyes shut and shakes himself inwardly.

Fernando is gone when he opens his eyes again.

 

~~~

 

Sergio was four when he met Fernando.

His mother had taken him to the local playground. He had noticed the boy sitting alone by the swings, and he had taken it upon himself to make him his new friend. Wide brown eyes looked at him as he introduced himself, and a soft voice had said, _OK, I’ll be your friend._

They were inseparable, and what a pair they were: the quiet kid everybody else ignored and the precocious kid who drew everyone in like moths to a flame. But Sergio chose Fernando, chose to join him playing in the corner, to give him his biggest smile and tell him stories to make him smile back and laugh. And Fernando always did, his face always so open in happiness around Sergio even as he would close off when others are near.

Sergio never understood it, too, how the other kids seemed to hate Fernando. They would talk over him but never to him, they would walk past without sparing him a glance, they would greet Sergio but ignore Fernando at his side.

Fernando, though, never seemed to mind. He kept to the corners and kept to himself, but for Sergio he smiles.

 

~~~

 

He splashes his face with cold water.

He is awake, he knows what day it is, he remembers what he had for dinner last night, he’s aware of his surroundings. He’s fine. He takes out the pill bottle and shakes it, checking to see that it really is empty and deciding to finally make time to drop by the pharmacy.

He steps out of the bathroom and heads for the kitchen. There’s no opened cereal box on the counter (he doesn't remember buying cereals), no used utensils in the sink (these could have been washed quickly), and no one propped against the center island (he’ll find him elsewhere).

Fernando is sitting on the couch in front of the TV, staring at the blank screen. He turns around as soon as Sergio comes in, as if he had been waiting all along.

Sergio needs a minute. His throat catches and he can’t breathe nor speak.

“What are you doing here?” His voice comes out hoarse when it does.

Fernando’s voice is soft, as it had always been, when he says, _Where else would I go?_

Fernando is wearing jeans and a sweatshirt now, and Sergio realizes it’s the one he wears so often, the one with the sleeves that go past his knuckles, holes cut into them so he can put his thumbs through as if he were wearing fingerless gloves. Had he only gone earlier for a change of clothes?

“I thought… I thought you left.”

A smile grows on Fernando’s face — eyes crinkling at the corners, lips pursed but twitching up at the sides, cheekbones defined.

_I never did._

 

~~~

 

His parents didn’t seem pleased when he first told them about Fernando. They smiled and said ‘That’s nice’, but even then he could tell that their eyes said something else. They weren’t actually mean to Fernando though, so he kept bringing him home to play, and they would spend hours in the backyard building mud fortresses, or in his room poring over his comics collection, or tearing through the house playing hide and seek.

They were probably in the same grade at school too, but Fernando didn’t seem to be in any of his classes. Still, Sergio would sometimes see him looking in through the small window of the classroom door, and they’d always sit together at lunch to share food, and they’d walk together at the end of the day to Sergio’s house where they’ll be Sergio and Fernando, Fernando and Sergio, the real dynamic duo, until it’s time for Fernando to go.

Sergio never wondered about where Fernando goes; he’s always back the next day.

He got into a fight at school after someone said something about Fernando, something untrue and wholly stupid. It made him so angry that he jumped at the other kid and punched him hard in the face. His parents weren't pleased at all.

They sat him down and told him to stop seeing Fernando, as if that was the problem. He only stopped talking about him to them. If there’s anything else, he began seeing him even more.

 

~~~

 

Sergio doesn’t even turn around as he walks the few blocks to the pharmacy. He doesn’t look behind him to check, but he’s as sure of it as he’s sure of his own name. He weaves through the morning pedestrian traffic — every one of them walking with purpose, their pace semi-urgent — and he’s had to twist away from sharp shoulders and elbows because his own pace is too slow, too hesitant. He’s distracted, but he’s sure he’s headed in the right direction. He’s also sure Fernando is not too many paces away.

The bell above the door dings as he enters. There are not too many people around today, so it doesn't take long for him to get his refill. All the time he stood at the counter waiting, he kept an ear to the door. The bell dings a couple more times.

Walking back, he’s only a few steps from the apartment when Fernando speaks up. _Do you really want me to go away?_

Sergio ignores him, gritting his teeth until he reaches his door. He doesn’t say anything when he comes in but he leaves the door open, listening to the steps following close behind. He takes his time hanging up his coat and putting away his purchase, ruefully wondering if he should already pop one pill right about now.

He doesn’t. Instead, he closes the door that Fernando never bothered to, and tries to push back in his head how he felt those first few times he took his meds on his own and realized they kept Fernando away.

He was miserable, but he kept on taking his meds anyway. Everybody had said he’s doing so well.

 

~~~

 

He’s too old for this, his parents said. It’s not healthy, they think he should see a doctor, they say they thought it was just a phase.

He didn’t know how they could have learned about him and Fernando. They had gone almost a year without trouble. The other boys in the dorm didn’t seem to mind that he let Fernando sleep in his room. It was his own room after all, and it’s not like Fernando ever went outside. Sergio laughed off some of the boys’ teasing, but he never got the idea that any of them will be complaining to anyone.

As it was, he found himself being interrogated like a common criminal during a surprise family lunch. He was tired of hiding, really, so he told them that yes, he still sees Fernando, they live together, they share a bed, he loves him and they can’t do anything about it.

Fernando was not in the room when they made Sergio take them there. It was unusual, but he figured the other boys may have warned him.

His parents looked around furtively, and Sergio knew they were trying to spot Fernando’s stuff, but he never really kept that much around. He was waiting to be told it was wrong to love another guy, and he had his answers ready. But, when they sat him down again for the serious talk they always seemed to have when it comes to Fernando, it was the same old arguments, the same pleading tone and pinched look on his parents’ faces as they told him he had to stop seeing Fernando, he had to try. Fernando was the problem, it seemed, and that’s when he snapped.

He couldn’t help the vicious anger in his voice. He asked them what they had against Fernando, something that he really couldn’t understand when Fernando had never done anything to them. He had been keeping his fists to his sides, but he found himself swinging one to his father’s jaw when they told him why.

Sergio screamed his head off at them and didn’t care that he just hit his father and made his mother cry. He only cared about Fernando, felt glad that he wasn’t there to see this and hear his parents’ lie. He and Fernando have been friends since they were kids, they’re inseparable, the real dynamic duo, in love with each other even before they knew it. He knows the texture of Fernando’s hair because he loves to ruffle it so much; he knows the sound of Fernando’s voice because even from a distance it can still make him shiver in his happiness; he knows the way Fernando’s face changes when he smiles because he’s seen it up close; he knows the feel and taste and smell of Fernando’s skin because he’s held it and kissed it and nosed it as they lay together in bed.

He knows Fernando, and he can’t be _not_ real.

It was barely a week later when he’d been dragged to the hospital, the attendants trying to catch his flailing arms and legs as he tried to get away. His parents stood to the side looking miserable, but they don’t answer his demand to see Fernando, to know what they’d done to him because he hasn’t come back since they told him the lie.

A nurse gave him a shot, and he eventually fell asleep.

He now thinks he’d been asleep all this time, all through his hospital stay, therapy, medication, recovery, release, and all this time that everybody’s telling him he’s been doing much better lately.

He had been asleep, and in his dream the lie was real. In his dream he was sick, and Fernando wasn’t real.

 

~~~

 

He finds Fernando sitting on the bed, waiting. He’s still dressed for outdoors, though, and looking as if he’s ready to leave at a moment’s notice. He looks up when Sergio comes in, a tight smile on his lips that’s unfamiliar because Sergio’s never seen it on him when they’re together. When they’re together, Fernando was always alive — bright eyes and open smile — and Sergio knows he’s also the same. Tight smiles are for other people when they’re around, intruding into their shared orbit.

“Fernando,” Sergio calls out to him, wanting to let him know that it’s him and no one else. Tight smiles aren’t for him.

 _Do you really want me to go away?_ Fernando asks again, quietly.

Hearing the silent accusation hurts, but it’s also a wake-up call. Sergio watches him from where he’s standing by the door. Fernando looks sad but still so beautiful, the sight and feel and taste of him something Sergio’s been missing for years, not just last week when his mother came to see him. She only reminded him that he’s not been doing so well after all — everything in his life back to normal but his desire to be normal with someone else.

No, he’s not falling for a lie anymore. He is awake.

Sergio crosses the room to the bed and leans down to kiss Fernando, their mouths impatiently colliding, tongues hungry for each other, hands scrambling to touch as much as they could.

_This is real, don’t you see? I am real._

They hold each other close even when their lips part; they're never letting go, no.

“You can help me flush the pills in the toilet later.”

~~~


End file.
